Pearl Harbor survivors honor fallen comrades

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii – One by one, aging survivors from ships sunk 65 years ago Thursday in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor laid wreaths under life preserver rings honoring their ships.

Nearly 500 survivors bowed their heads at 7:55 a.m., the minute planes began bombing the harbor in a surprise attack that thrust the United States into World War II.

“America in an instant became the land of the indivisible,” said former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw, the author of “The Greatest Generation,” who spoke at the shoreside ceremonies. “There are so many lessons from that time for our time, none greater than the idea of one nation greater than the sum of its parts.”

The veterans, most in Hawaiian aloha shirts, were honored with prolonged applause at the solemn ceremony near where some of the ships remain rusting and moss-covered under the harbor’s waters.

“It is because of you and people like you that we have the freedoms we enjoy today,” Capt. Taylor Skardon said after relating each ship’s story at the end of the ceremony.

A priest gave a Hawaiian blessing and Marines performed a rifle salute.

Many were treating the gathering as their last, uncertain if they would be alive or healthy enough to travel to Hawaii for the next big memorial ceremony, the 70th anniversary.

“Sixty-five years later, there’s not too many of us left,” said Don Stratton, a seaman 1st class who was aboard the USS Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941. “In another five years I’ll be 89. The good lord willing, I might be able to make it.”

Stratton and other survivors were boarding a boat to the white memorial straddling the sunken hull of the USS Arizona, where they laid wreaths and leis in honor of the dead.

“We thank those who lost their lives 65 years ago, and we honor the survivors and their families who are with us here today,” said Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle.

More people died on the Arizona than any other ship as 1,177 servicemen, or about 80 percent of its crew, perished.

Altogether, the surprise attack killed 2,390 Americans and injured 1,178.

Japanese veterans who participated in the attack as navigators and pilots also paid their respects, offering flowers at the Arizona memorial for the American and Japanese who died.